organization

or as the brits would say, organisation...
anyway, this was something that we could/should have done much better while i was at nexus. this is a tricky area, because if you do it well, you should never really notice or have to work on it, but if done poorly, the entire ministry could suffer very much.
the things we need to work through together, and hopefully i can start drafting things for us to think through, are things like, church polity, how will we make major decisions, how will we make minor decisions, what directions will we go with certain things, say our music guy or youth girl or children's person decides that he or she needs to leave, how will we fill that certain role. what roles will we have, what ministries will we create.

on the one hand, we do not ever want to give the impression that this is a business and must be run as such, that is not the purpose of church. there are certain things about church that are messy, and necessarily so. it is a place where ragamuffins tell other ragamuffins where to find bread, to steal a paraphrase from brennan manning.

however, we should also have the insight to learn from those that have foolishly ignored any kind of structure and injured themselves and their ministry. for instance, when it comes to how money is spent, all too often that is left at the sole discretion of the pastor. this then turns into a dangerous practice in which the pastor has more pressure upon him or her than necessary. it also opens up avenues of temptation for the misuse of money.

the things we need to work through together, and maybe the most important, is a system of checks for ... checks. how do we make sure no one can abuse money, while at the same time trusting eachother? also, how do we want to make decisions? the thing we have to keep in mind while we work through these things is that our church may very well grow very large, and it may very well stay small. we have to have some sort of process that works for either.

this is not a popular subject, but once we have this kind of thing worked out it will enable us to do ministry and care about people without worrying about the same things over and over.

the move went well, we are here in waco now, jobless and disorganized. pray that god would provide, and please, leave any needs you may have here for the rest of us to know. it is not to early to build our own community.

The Countdown

As I sit here in Brownwood's finest coffee shop filling out my FAFSA... again. It hit me; 2009 is right around the corner. I better get crackin'!

updates

sorry, were pretty busy getting ready to move at the moment, only six more shifts at starbucks, pray that i dont murder any customers before its all over. just want to let you all know, robin had a couple job interviews in waco a little more than a week ago, so be praying that one of those would work out. its kinda tough to be moving on, scary but exciting at the same time.

so, whats the word on you? update us all, let us know whats going on in your life. once i get moved, i will find a series of things to post on, to get all of our brains working.